If Tears Were Bullets (She'd Be Dead By Now)
by Miss Meggie
Summary: Somehow she never saw this coming. Sequel to Next To Me. WardSimmonsSummer Week 9: Bite & AU


The reason Jemma never chose to become an actual doctor of medicine is really quite simple, she loathes hospitals and can think of nothing but her mother dying, frail, and sickly in a hospital bed every time she enters one.

She hasn't been in a hospital since Nicky was born, a little more than two years ago.

She strides up to the nurses station with much more confidence than she really has, "My husband was brought in, he was …" She trails off hitching Nicky higher on her hip. He's looking directly at her with those unflinching, intelligent, brown eyes of his. It's like he senses something is horribly wrong and to minimize his worry she needs to use the correct inflection and choose the words carefully. "His name is Grant Ward; he was injured and brought here for treatment. Can you give me any information on his condition?" her voice stays even, calm and patient.

The kindness in the charge nurse's eyes sends a foreboding shiver down her spine. "We've quite a few injuries coming in from the riots ma'am. As soon as I know anything, I promise I'll let you know, what's your name sweetheart?"

"Jemma Simmons-Ward."

She goes and sits in the waiting room, the walls are painted a shade of green that ensures she'll never, ever again eat mint chip ice cream. She sits down in a taupe colored plastic mod style chair. She keeps her hold on Nicky, who sits across her lap facing her. His face is firmly buried in her hair, his breath feathers across her neck in a slightly uneven pattern.

Her boy is afraid despite her best efforts. She rubs a hand down his back, and back up. She keeps up the motion to soothe herself as much as him. "It's going to be okay, Nick." She whispers to him.

"There are lots of sick people here." His words brush her collar bone. In the exact spot left a little raw by Grant's morning stubble. It stings, just a little and grounds her.

"There are that's true." She agrees while still rubbing his back.

He sits up to look at her and the trust in his eyes makes her want to cry, to sob as brokenly as her confidence feels now. "How do you know it's going to be okay?" he asks with his trademark curiousness.

She puts on a brave face. "How do I usually know?"

"You're Mummy, you know everything." He parrots one of Grant's favorite statements only with a name change and much less sarcasm.

"That's right!" She smiles brightly hoping Grant will refuse to make a liar out of her.

She finds herself thinking of the conversation she had with Grant recently, the one where he so thoroughly convinced her that his way was safest.

" _Look Jem, if I have my own private security company I can decide which jobs to take. I can take some of the danger out of it if I'm babysitting celebrities and rich kids. Maybe every once in a while I'll take on a foreign dignitary, but it's safe and I won't have to take the pity jobs your father tosses my way."_

She had agreed because his plan had made sense and was financially doable if they used their trust funds to get it started.

The hitch was though, it was still in mom and pop stages and he'd had to take on guarding the Pylorian Princess Kara Lynn of the Palamas Dynasty.

There had been a riot outside the UK's Pylorian Embassy. There had been explosions, but she didn't know any more than that. Jemma hated operating without full knowledge on her side.

She'd sat so still, so long that Nicky had fallen asleep in her arms.

When the kind eyed nurse comes up to her, Jemma completely stops breathing. "He was shot. That's all I know love."

She hands Jemma a necklace with his wedding band looped onto the chain. "He can't have jewelry in the OR." She knows this necklace, she'd given it too him in a fit of wifely superstition.

"No, you have to give it back to him; it's the medal of Saint George. It's for courage and bravery." She thrust sit back at the woman with every bit of conviction she can muster up.

"I can't sweet heart."

Defeated, Jemma looks down at the medallion in her hand. The nooks and crannies of the intricate design are flecked with dried blood.

She covers her mouth to stifle the sob crawling up the back of her throat. She forces herself to remain utterly still; she is unwilling to wake her child with the force of her tears.

"Should I call in family?" she croaks at the nurse's turned back.

She turns back around. "You might like the support darling."

Jemma can only nod.

She knows Grant will try to brush this off when he wakes, say it was nothing more than a scratch or that the bullet just jumped up and bit him like was Forrest Gump, his intention surely being to make her smile.

He isn't awake to brush away her worries or laugh off the dark cloud she feels looming over them, he isn't there dealing with the emotional aftermath of loving someone both dumb and brave enough to step into the path of flying bullets. Only she is.

She lays Nicky gently down across the seats. She stands on legs that suddenly tingle painfully to life with pins and needles skittering all up and down her legs. She walks three steps away from Nicky; she doesn't want him hearing this even in his sleep.

Just as she's about to dial up Fitz, Skye barrels through the doors like she's not the daughter of the President. She leaves her detail to scramble along behind her. Fitz is at her side holding tightly to her hand.

They reach her at the same time and both envelope her in a tight hug, the fierceness of it causing her to choke back tears. "How did you know?" her words are muffled, in the pink velour of Skye's favorite travel sweats.

"Morse saw it all go down, our flight is grounded we got here as quick as we could." Fitz informs her, his words falling into her hair.

"How bad?" Skye asks even as she's still holding on to her when Fitz has lets go. Jemma's glad for it because her fear is starting to overwhelm her. She's not sobbing uncontrollably, but she is weeping, Jemma feels the warm slide of tears down her face but everything else is numb. It's like viewing herself analytically from the outside. Skye's hug staves off the broken feeling. "I don't know, no one will tell me anything."

"I'll fix that, right now." Skye says and Jemma can see her mother's determination behind the words. She can also see her father's gentle heart in the begrudging way she releases her hold on Jemma.

She nods at Fitz. "No, Leo I need to move, sitting still was making it worse. Keep an eye on Nick for me please?" Jemma says.

"Sure love." He agrees.

She keeps up circuitous route around the lobby, trying to hypothesize what injuries he could have sustained, how severely, and where. When she starts to frighten herself with the direness of her own thoughts she switches trains so to speak.

Jemma does not really believe in God, her mind has too many scientific explanations for when the faithful just see God, if Jemma is anything at all she's Buddhist. Grant however, was raised catholic and it stuck. If it would save him, she would go and hit her knees in the chapel this instant.

She takes a deep breath as Skye drags over a beleaguered looking young doctor.

"Ma'am," he greets her. "Your husband was shot twice, with hollow point ammunition."

"This means that…" he starts and Jemma can't help but cut him off in the need to end this dreadful not mystery.

"That it tore through his Kevlar vest and anything else in its path. How bad is it?" She finished for him.

"He was shot once in the leg and once in the chest. He'll need plates and rods in his leg but that's not what has us concerned. The bullet to the chest caused a nick in the lower Auxiliary artery, tore through the lower lobe of his lung, and fragmented in bits around his pericardium." He said rotely as if he'd been practicing it.

Skye looks confused but Jemma understands all too well. She feels like she may fall through the floor. "It's really, very bad Skye." She murmurs.

Jemma can feel her hysteria rising as the doctor puts things in simpler terms for Skye, they have to patch one of the arteries in his chest so he doesn't bleed to death, they have to remove the damaged portion of his lung and repair what's left. Then, they must find all of the tiny bits of bullet surrounding his heart. It's that last part, which will leave Grant in a precarious state.

It's starting to all sink in, to permeate Jemma's hope. He could die.

Her breath is coming in and out in noisy huffs, she distractedly realizes she's hyperventilating as her vision begins to grey and blur at the edges. Someone forces her to sit. There's a competent hand at her neck, calloused fingers rub gently as they force her head between her knees.

"Breathe Jemma." It's Fitz who'd forced her to sit. She recognizes the voice finally; he coaches her back into a normal respiration rate.

Once the worst of her panic is over she sits up shakily. Nicky looks at her with a wary, critical eye. How had she missed him waking? She is usually so in tune with her child. "Is Daddy going to die?"

Jemma never knew five words alone, could break every bit of her heart. The tears she was too shocked to cry, the tears she'd shoved down, shoved away, flat out refused to let out! All come raining down on Nicky's innocent face with its terror filled eyes and his earth shattering question.

Somehow as if by miracle, she finds her voice. "I don't know my Darling, but I hope not." She the woman who knows everything knows absolutely nothing of fate; it's unsettling for them both.

The wait is interminable and exhausting. Grant makes it through by the skin of his teeth.

As she sits in the ICU chair next to his bed as close as is humanly possible to his sleeping form, she bites her nails each pretty purple lacquered one falling, like ready soldiers between her murderous teeth.

Grant likes her hands, and the way his dwarf hers, she should stop biting the nails before she has none left but, she's just so afraid as the ventilator hisses into the silence, as if taunting her. _"You almost lost…"_ it seems to sing song in an ugly reminder.

Her fifteen minute interval ends and she trades places with Romanoff. All of Grant's buddies had shown up for him. Jemma can't wait to see him try and play off how important it will make him feel.

She wants to sit outside the door and wait her turn again. Though Skye doesn't allow it and drags her down to the hospital cafeteria, she chokes down a bland turkey sandwich. At the sight of her, Nicky climbs up into her lap. "May I please go see Daddy, I need to see him before I go to sleep, please Mummy, please." He begs holding tightly around her neck.

Skye holds out her open bag of chips to him, almost a peace offering. "Listen Bud, you're a tiny dude and the hospital doesn't let tiny dudes back there where your Daddy is." Skye says trying to help her out.

"I won't be scared, I can be brave." He tips his chin up and Jemma can see bits of Grant's defiant spirit that will bite them in the arse one day.

"As soon as they give me the okay, you will be his very first visitor I promise." Jemma assures him. She presses a kiss to his cheek for herself and one to his forehead as a placeholder for Grant.

-/-/-

He wakes and it feels like someone hit his leg a thousand times with a metal bat and his chest, holy shit his chest feels like someone is trying to tear his lungs out, all while an elephant dances on his rib cage.

He looks over at Jemma who appears to be starting at the ceiling, his heart rate must pick up because the noise increases and her eyes flash to him. He just wants to say her name but nothing comes out.

"You're on a ventilator love." She rushes to his side. "Don't fight it; it's helping your lungs recover. Don't think about it. Focus on something else."

He points at her. "Yes, focusing on me will work. Do you want to know what happened?" he nods yes.

"You were shot, in the leg and in the chest. Your leg will give you fits in winter, you lost a bit of lung and will require antibiotics for a time, to stave off endocarditic infection from whatever bullet fragments they may have missed, but you'll be right as rain soon enough." Her voice is even and bright but there are tears sliding off her cheeks. He raises his hand even as it hurts like seven kinds of hell and wipes them away. "I'm fine really, I am!" He tries to call bullshit with just the power of his gaze.

Jemma, his Jemma just pushes on.

"Your charge? She's fine too, everyone is fine, we've had to bar the door to keep Nicky out but he's fine."

He brushes the hair falling in her eyes behind her ear and it cuts off her ramble. "You scared me." Her voice shakes. "Desk work from now on." He tries to smile but the tubing won't allow it.

He nods toward her tablet on the couch. She retrieves it and he pulls up Nick's favorite finger painting app. "I LOVE YOU. I'M SORRY I ALMOST BIT THE DUST." He writes out painstakingly.

Jemma laughs loudly. "Really love, is that what we're calling it?"

His only response is a wink that has her smiling through tears for the first time since the horrid day had begun.

AN: I own nothing but Nicholas Leonidas Ward. I hope you've enjoyed. As always, reviews are welcome I only ask you be gentle in your critiques.-MM


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